Discovery of 19th century document sheds light on the unearthing of astrolabe reportedly used by Samuel de Champlain

Randy Boswell, Postmedia News08.07.2013

French explorer Samuel de Champlain is depicted in this sculpture using his astrolabe, a navigational instrument. Chris Mikula/Postmedia News
/ Postmedia News

This astrolabe, repatriated from a U.S. collection, is widely considered one of Canada's most important historical artifacts — though there is no direct proof it ever belonged to Samuel de Champlain, the 17th-century founder of New France.Postmedia News
/ Postmedia News

An Ottawa historian’s discovery of a 19th-century manuscript previously unseen by scholars has shed new light on the 1867 unearthing of “Champlain’s Astrolabe,” the navigational instrument famously — though controversially — believed to have been lost by French explorer Samuel de Champlain during his pioneering journey up the Ottawa River exactly four centuries ago this year.

The 13-centimetre-wide, 629-gram circle of brass, repatriated from a U.S. collection in 1989 for $250,000 by the Canadian Museum of Civilization, is widely considered one of country’s most important and evocative historical artifacts — though there is no direct proof it ever actually belonged to Champlain, the 17th-century founder of New France.

And Carleton University historian Bruce Elliott’s discovery of an 1893 document penned by Capt. Daniel Cowley — an Ottawa Valley steamboat entrepreneur who had been a key part of the astrolabe saga when it was found 26 years earlier — appears to strengthen the case against Champlain’s ownership of the object.

Elliott acquired Cowley’s writings at an auction of 19th-century manuscripts once owned by an early Canadian researcher and biographer, Henry Morgan. In Cowley’s handwritten reminiscences about operating the Muskrat Lake steamboat service in the Upper Ottawa Valley during the mid-1800s, he offers fresh details about the astrolabe’s discovery and early handling — including the fact that the relic was in his own possession for a time.

“It was in my desk on the steamer for some months afterwards,” Cowley notes.

Some researchers assert that the astrolabe was likely left behind by a Jesuit missionary as part of a traveller’s supply cache, a theory bolstered by the fact that the device was apparently found with a set of communion cups. Yet Elliott and most other scholars don’t rule out the possibility — however slim — that the astrolabe might have been owned by Champlain, who bypassed a rough stretch of the Ottawa River in June 1613 by portaging along a trail near present-day Cobden, Ont.

That’s where the astrolabe was found in August 1867, amid the upturned roots of a felled tree, by 14-year-old farmboy Edward Lee. At the time, he and his father were clearing bush for a road serving the Muskrat Lake steamboat service about 150 kilometres northwest of Ottawa.

Lee gave the astrolabe to Charles Overman, a steamboat pilot who worked with Cowley. When Overman later moved to a new job in Pembroke, Ont., “he took the instrument with him there,” Cowley states in his unpublished memoirs, “and (I) do not know how it was finally disposed of, or who got it.”

The artifact eventually wound up in the collection of a wealthy American antiquarian, who willed it to the New York Historical Society in the 1940s. The astrolabe was dramatically acquired by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in June 1989 on the eve of its official opening.

At the time, the new museum’s director, George MacDonald, called the astrolabe “a national icon,” and then-communications minister Marcel Masse described it as “a sacred part of our history” and “a symbol of the discovery of our land.”

Elliott and a team of Carleton University history students have produced a museum exhibit on the astrolabe that highlights Cowley’s manuscript as an intriguing new chapter in the epic story of the artifact — a replica of which once went into space with Canadian astronaut Julie Payette, symbolizing the nation’s enduring spirit of exploration.

The exhibit, titled “Whose Astrolabe? Provenance and Cultural Ownership of a Canadian Icon,” is showing at Pinhey’s Point museum in west-end Ottawa until the end of August and is also scheduled for display at Carleton this fall, all part of the 400th anniversary commemoration of Champlain’s 1613 voyage along the Ottawa.

Cowley’s memoir “provides additional evidence about the instrument’s mysterious origins,” Elliott and his team conclude, “but most importantly, Cowley situated the astrolabe within a broader discussion of French and indigenous activity in the Ottawa Valley, rather than specifically with the story of Champlain.”

Cowley’s casual referencing of the astrolabe as just one of many historic and prehistoric artifacts exposed during 19th-century bush clearing around Muskrat Lake suggests any number of French travellers could have left it behind, Elliott told Postmedia News.

“In the 19th century, they always wanted to pin these objects on the well-known figures, and it becomes a real symbol of Champlain,” he said.

“But I think the real importance of the (Cowley) manuscript with regards to the astrolabe is the fact that he sees it as one of a number of artifacts,” Elliott added.

“It could very well have been a passing Jesuit who cached it there. But could it have been Champlain? Sure, it might have been — but it might not have been, too. The thing is, the focus on Champlain has helped to give it fame, and the object has helped to give Champlain fame. But no matter whose it was, it’s still an absolutely wonderful artifact.”

rboswell@postmedia.com

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Discovery of 19th century document sheds light on the unearthing of astrolabe reportedly used by Samuel de Champlain

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